Sri Lanka bus blast kills 12
Colombo, Reuters: At least a dozen people were killed in a suspected Tamil Tiger bomb attack on a civilian bus in north-east Sri Lanka on Monday, the military said.

The blast occurred just hours after the armed forces held a defiant show of military prowess in the capital to mark the country’s 60th anniversary of independence from Britain.

“It was a Tamil Tiger claymore mine targeting a civilian bus in Weli-oya. Twelve people were killed and 17 admitted to hospital,” a military spokesman said.

Weli-oya is in the north-eastern district of Polonnaruwa, about 200 km from Colombo.

Serbia: Narrow victory for Tadic
Belgrade, Reuters: Serbia’s pro-Western president Boris Tadic has won re-election in a contest with nationalist Tomislav Nikolic, but his narrow victory may only have set up a fresh struggle over the country’s future course.

Analysts say it puts the survival of Serbia’s ruling coalition in question as it braces for the secession of Kosovo, the Albanian-dominated province, which has Western backing for a declaration of independence in the next few weeks.

In a 2004 presidential race, Tadic beat Nikolic by some nine percentage points, in what the West saw as a welcome sign that the reactionary nationalism which fuelled war in the 1990s over the breakup of Yugoslavia was weakening.